Sudbury, ON. Wal-Mart Revives Proposal

Plans for south end Wal-Mart revived [Sudbury Star (Canada)]

Plans are set to build a 190,000-square-foot Wal-Mart store in Sudbury’s south end, one of the country’s largest real estate developers says.

But sources familiar with the project suggest that, given it’s decade-long history, nothing should be taken for granted just yet.

The proposed Wal-Mart store is part of a larger retail development that would cost upwards of $50 million, create 400 jobs and generate $1 million in new municipal taxes, city council’s planning committee was told Tuesday.

Details of the proposal were provided to the committee by the SmartCentres group, which has a portfolio of 185 shopping centres across the country, 146 of which have a Wal-Mart store as the anchor tenant.

The Wal-Mart store proposed for the south end would span 191,000 square feet - nearly 50 per cent larger than the Wal-Mart store at the New Sudbury Centre.

The proposed Wal-Mart store in the south end would be the first phase of a larger retail development on land north and east of the new Countryside Drive. The second phase of the project would feature other big box stores with another 276,000 square feet of retail space.

The developer is free to proceed with the first phase of the project at any time, given that the property in question is appropriately zoned for such a commercial development.

“Our intention is to start construction later this year on that parcel,” said Ornella Richichi, vice-president, land development with SmartCentres.

However, the developer needs to secure a property rezoning from the city for the land earmarked for the larger, second phase of the development plan.

Sources familiar with the decade-long history of proposals for a south-end Wal-Mart store say even the phase one development should not be considered a sure thing. Experience shows the entire project could depend on the developer’s success in getting rezoning approval for the phase two property, the sources suggest.

In the last decade, real estate developers have had negotiations with three separate property owners in the south end on proposals that reportedly would have included a Wal-Mart store. In 1999, city council approved a plan that would have seen the retail development located on a property owned by Dalron Construction on Regent Street South. That plan subsequently was held up by an appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board and nine years later, that appeal has yet to be resolved.

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“The developer has just let it sit there,” said one city source. In the meantime, discussions and negotiations have occurred with multiple property owners.

In recent years, Wal-Mart had numerous discussions with the owners of the Southridge Mall about building a store on that property, noted Gordon Petch, a Toronto lawyer representing the mall owners.

Over a period of three years - until about two months ago - the Southridge Mall owners and Wal-Mart representatives exchanged more than two-dozen draft proposals to construct a store on the mall property, Petch told the planning committee Tuesday.

Then about two months ago, “they stopped returning our calls,” apparently because negotiations were underway with another property owner, Hautamaki Estates Ltd., he said.

Hautamaki Estates, which owns the property off Countryside Drive that is now the preferred site for the Wal-Mart store, also had been in the on-again, off-again running for the development several years ago, Petch noted.

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, May 21, 2008